By Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US
In this part of living in Santa Cruz, I will discuss activities to do on campus and downtown, local wildlife and the International Living Centre on campus. In my first post I spoke about grocery shopping, money spending and saving, commented on the local weather and free student facilities at UCSC.
Continue reading “Living in Santa Cruz, CA (Part 2)”
By Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US
Studying in Santa Cruz is definitely different from Manchester! First of all, you are in a forest, surrounded by mountains with super fresh air. Despite the fact that the campus is open to the public, you see very few people from the public on campus. The campus isn’t located near Santa Cruz town (the town is about a 15-20 minute bus journey), which has its positives and negatives. The campus is quiet, full of wildlife, and has a unique student community. However, finding activities to do without a car and shopping for groceries is a little tricky. In this post I will cover grocery shopping, money spending and saving, comment on the local weather and free student facilities. In the second part to living in Santa cruz, I will discuss things to do on campus and downtown, local wildlife and the International Living Centre on campus.
Above image: of the campus forest by College Nine and Ten.
Continue reading “Living in Santa Cruz, CA (Part 1)”
By Emma Colson, University of Auckland, New Zealand
For me, one of the hardest parts of the application to study abroad was choosing the 10 countries/ universities to put down and even harder, to choose a top 3. The University of Auckland was my third choice, but having been here for over 3 months, I couldn’t be happier that I was allocated here. Having said that, before coming, I had little to no knowledge about the university or the country, so for those interested in what New Zealand has to offer I hope my experience will help you.
Even though COVID-19 put an end to my experience abroad I’ve been thinking about how Arizona State University is quite different from Manchester.
First of all, there is a designated week for final exams while the rest of the semester has different deadlines. For example, only in March, I had to write three papers, one poster and an oral presentation, a group project report, and an online quiz. All these assignments are worth between 5-20% of the course. This changes my time management quite significantly because rather than having one long paper that is worth 100% of my course and four months to write it, in this case, I have many short tasks to complete, which are spread throughout the semester.
Secondly, not all courses have finals. For example, for one class the professor chose not to have us writing the final but rather presenting a group project, so the last week of the semester I will be free from that class load work and I will be able to focus on the rest.
Third, there are no official mitigating circumstances, instead, it is the student that by talking to the professor works out a different date for the assignment. This speeds up the process and, for me, it alleviated much anxiety that could be caused by the negative response of the request in some cases. In addition, attendance is mandatory and affects the final mark, so there are no podcasts like in Manchester and missing a class means lowering one’s average. This guarantees that students are almost always present and participating, even though months after the class there is no chance to rewatch it online.
All these differences made me feel as if I was in high school again, where I had less autonomy and more time constrictions. Even my relationship with the rest of the class is very different because I have about 15-20 classmates versus 90 in Manchester. So I know all of them quite in-depth, I have participated in activities with everyone, and overall I have a better idea of who I am sharing my classwork with. However, the style again resembles that of a high school and it is far from being that of a lecture, which made me lose the habit of taking many notes and staying focused for longer.
Overall, these two systems are very different but I don’t find any better or worse, it is just a question of preference. However, I also think that having the possibility to try them both was amazing because it helped me become more conscious about my study habits and preferences, and I definitely became more flexible!
Alice Logan, University of Copenhagen, English Literature and American Studies
Firstly, as a disclaimer we all know that Copenhagen is an insanely expensive city to live in, however having spent five months there I did find some handy ways to save some pennies for summer travelling ☀️
Simon Hird / / Geography / / University of Auckland / / NZ
So as part of year abroad we were asked to produce a series of blogs for Geography. Each had to be a on a different topic and in a variety of formats (i.e.referenced essay, diary entry, video). This particular video blog entry was reflecting on the positives and negatives that I have experienced on my year abroad – it is slightly more personal and geography related than my other posts, due to it’s initial purpose, but hopefully you guys can take something from it:
Cheers,
Simon
🤘 🖖
P.S. If you guys want to see a few more photos feel free to check out my Instagram: @simonhird
and…
the Instagram run by study abroad students at The University of Auckland if you want more of an insight into day-to-day life of an exchange student @studyabroad_auckland
Apart from getting to see the world and meeting amazing people, studying abroad throws you in at the deep end in terms of developing life skills. I thought I’d share my experience of trying to ground a good work-life balance while being in New Zealand. It definitely hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learnt a lot from my experience so far… Continue reading “Work-Life Balance Abroad”
Finally, my last day in Maryland has passed. It was pretty sad to see Maryland and not knowing when will be the next time I’m going to see it again – McKeldin library where I spent days revising for exam and doing my assignments, the stadium where we cheered for Maryland and getting super excited when we smashed Purdue on a football game, seeing Stamp building for the last time where so many memories were made…. Time flies too fast.
It wasn’t an easy semester at all. There were so many times I wished I didn’t even bother to go study abroad, but now I’m happy I persevered through (that’s for another blog post that’s coming soon!). And for sure, there were so many lessons that I learned through studying abroad. Here I’ll talk about my 3 greatest lessons that I learned in Maryland.
Continue reading “My 3 Greatest Lesson(s) from Studying Abroad (Final Reflection)”
By Chloe Coradetti, Mechanical Engineering, The National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
Hellooo Manchester,
After having the time of my life travelling during 6 weeks over Christmas Break, it is time to go back to Uni!
The majority of exchangers stay only for one semester. Therefore, the National University of Singapore was expecting a whole new batch of fresh new exchange students. I was excited to meet some new people and be one of the “ancient” … basically a local Lah (singlish exclamation mark).
Additionally, the deeper bonds created during Christmas while travelling with my UK exchanger friends is going to be greatly valuable as they were almost all staying in NUS for a year as well.
Singapore never felt more like home than when you start off fresh a new semester in a familiar environment with your friend-family! What an awesome feeling to be back!!
Continue reading “Semester Two as a Year long exchange student”
By Chloe Coradetti, Mechanical Engineering, The National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore
Hellooo Manchester,
In this post I’m going to talk about the mid terms examination, my recess week holiday and life on campus in general.
Midterms – Mid September
Where to begin…
Stressful for sure, especially that we do not have them in Manchester and therefore I didn’t know what to expect.
Challenging, because as they count for only 10% to 20% of our final grade, the teachers take them as an opportunity to really test our problem solving skills by giving us impossible exercises… literally.
Continue reading “The Exchanger life: midterms, recess week, panic and Fun!”
